Tales Of Avatar Country
by Mr. Bluu
Summary: A series of snippets based off of the concept album "Avatar Country" by Swedish metal band Avatar, based on a fictional country of the same name and Its King. Lyrics are not owned by me.
1. Legend of The King

THE KING KNEELS BEFORE THE SOURCE OF METAL, DEEP BELOW HIS PALACE.

It was not something one would expect to see from The King. All of his subjects, from the peasants to the soldiers of Avatar Country, and even his Elite Orchestra always fell at his feet. For The King to kneel at the toes of another was unheard of. History had no sovereign who was The King's equal. No one could take The King's throne and usurp his mighty legacy; within the Constitution of Avatar Country, as well as in the harsh and snowy flesh of reality itself, was written the truth :

KING IS THRONE AND THRONE IS KING AND ON AND ON THE PEOPLE SING

But this was no arrogant rival The King finds himself in supplication to. This great crystal, crowned in rock dust and ancient roots, was his reason for coming to this land. His heart and conscience both had shook their fists at him when he had heard of the trials across the ocean. He had come to save the people who'd lived here. And this great crystal was his tool, in that and all endeavours. The gem of metal is the power source for The King's Flower : his royal battle axe, with six strings upon which he thrummed death for Avatar Country's enemies and joy for its citizens. The King is loyal to his people and the people are loyal to Their King.

Ever so often, The King drags himself from the elation of walking amongst his people, and does what he must. He takes to the steps below The King's Palace, those that lead deep under Avatar Country, to the secret drum that the world had hidden since time immemorial. The Propaganda Minister would order the vault door that led there close and locked.

The King's Flower is unslung from The King's back, a few strands of his wavy, lionlike mane of hair catching on its strings. As they always did when he was about to summon the might of metal, his fingers twitched reflexively, almost in anticipation. There was one perk to this business below the ground that The King had to attend to : it whipped his subject into such joyous fury that all the other lands knew it; knew it and feared it. No one ever attacked Avatar Country now; the army was fearsome, driven by single-minded, frenzied love of Their King. If an invading force made it past the populace, they had the shadowed, merciless King's Harvest to deal with. And if by some miracle, they were skilled enough to evade even The King's most deadly agents, they faced him, in all his furious, thundering glory. Powered by metal, The King's Flower became the scalpel of the Gods.

He strums a few notes, and already the freezing air is burning, scalding with potential energy. The King with his Flower is like a newborn star. The energy that just the beginning of his recharge outputs can light up the planet for a billion billion lifetimes. Just as it lights up the lives of Avatar Country's citizens, and their happiness in turn lights up the heart of Their King.

The playing grows louder, more complicated, and light the color of blood siphons off of the metal source. The beam shoots from one of its geometric surfaces, lancing across the room and flowing into the Flower. Already The King feels revitalized. His mind was elevated once more, able to swim through the refuse of ages effortlessly.

Louder, louder, louder, and then-

He hears the normally locked vault door thunk open, and The King unleashes his fury.

The whole room booms with red thunder. The power of metal and Flower and King is unmatched. Nothing in the realm was greater than The King. But the Propaganda Minister had been beside The King longer than anyone else in his Elite Orchestra. His destiny was almost as entwined with that of metal as that of The King. He had long since grown immune to its effects.

The Minister had his own thunder, though, one that was rare and sought after in Avatar Country; a gift from the Gods.

"My King, I've seen the light!" He exclaims, not immune to the mirth that the King's Flower poured upon the Citizens. They had played these tunes and sang these words a million times, in front of untold swaths of Avatar Country's people. For a moment, The King is back there, the first time the people had ever heard him play. The Minister had been right there with him. The two share a smile.

"Engines set to battle, let's go! I'm not afraid!

Come to me destruction!" He points a thin finger towards the chunk of metal, his birthmarked face stretched into a mask of unnerving glee. "And come whatever may!"

The knees of his unnaturally long legs hit the solid stone floor, the bristling energy of metal only a few feet away from his face. He kneels before The King. "I have roamed the planet, but I shall search no more! Raise this flag in victory!"

"What are you waiting for?"

The magnificent flag of Avatar Country, the nation and haven The Minister had helped him build, unfurls on a sheer face of rock on the other side of the cavern. Emblazoned with the red and gold and black of The King's lion aspect, and A for Avatar Country, it engulfs the entire surface, nearly forty feet in width. It glows like the sun, further incensing The King. He slides into the rhythm of his own Flower, faster now, smoother.

The Minister is not done yet.

"Spread your wings of flame and sorrow. Time to rise, for our tale has just begun!" he goads. One hand on the King's flexing, caped shoulder.

"Take this land as your loved one . . ."

Another flag billows out, pride and power shimmering off of its every golden thread.

"You were born a legend!"

Tonight, the whole world knows the legend of The King.


	2. King's Harvest

THE MOON SPASMS LIKE A SERPENT IN A MILLION COLORS, BUT THE NIGHT IS STILL AS DARK AS EVER.

The room is dimly lit. Only a few small candles light the smoky space, their burnt oils drifting into the air and out the open canopy of the building. Almost by the hands of fate, or The King, the circular smokehole captures the moon's perfection curve exactly. Through that hole, the million-and-one shades of light from that particular celestial body spiral down, snail-paced, onto the bloody beginnings of greatness.

Family members had come from every corner of Avatar Country to witness this. Conception had been begotten under this gleaming cosmic pearl, and it finally ended the same way. Chained in sweat-slicked sheets, bloody and pale, the mother breathes her last. Her belly is flat once more. Her journey is done. The King himself had visited her home nine long months ago, joy for her pregnancy in his uncharacteristically cold eyes. She was a vessel for someone wonderful, he'd said; someone who would defend Avatar Country against its enemies forever. His heart would ache at her passing until the end of time, he'd said, and she had been able to tell expressly that he was telling the truth with just one look in his eyes.

The older woman who had delivered her child, the family's matriarch, turns from the body. In her aged hands squirms her diametric opposite. The baby is pale and crying, still stained with blood and uteral viscera. Towards the pulsing moon she raises him, and the fluids still covering him shine under its light. Its brightness is enough to make her squint her vision into flickers.

"As I lift this child from the ground," she begins, turning to the cramped branches of the family tree that watched enraptured. "No matter how long it takes, he's returning. Our destiny is written in the dirt, nurtured by mothers raised by the seasons."

"My field, my seeds . . ."

"I am the Harvest," the men and women before her reply.

She washes and cleans the child of filth, and with him swaddled in a dark cloak she sets out from the building. She braves the cold but snowless night for hours until finally, feet blackened, she places him next at the doors of The King's Palace.

There is an imprint of the ancient woman in the wind for barely a second before she trains away into the night.

* * *

There are but twelve of them, each with hearts most unlike those of their once-fellow Citizens. Their hearts are sharpened with hardship and honed into dark instruments of death. Some critics in the world would call The King's Harvest nothing but another manipulated child death squad; their love for Their King warped to violent tools he uses for his own ends, the nurturing and affection all children should know be damned. They are the lowest caste of Avatar Country, the one that feels the least joy, the one that endures the most hatred from politicians and pastors across the globe.

They are all wrong.

They are no longer children, with no agency to object to becoming an acolyte of The King. They are adults, grown men and women who will send the enemies of Avatar Country to hell screaming. They are merciless, unyielding, unstoppable. Wherever there are shadows in the midnight corners of the homes of The King's foes, The King's Harvest waits, forever ready, until the house of the eternal hunt rises again, and The Owl takes what belongs to her.

But just because they slaughter without pause does not mean they do not have souls. It is true that their love for Their King has been warped, but to the momentous purpose of ensuring their ruler outlasts all evil. Love swells within them, orgasmically strong, as The King's Propaganda Minister steps from an offshooting hall of the Palace, and surveys the new initiates with a proud grin plastered on his birthmarked face.

They kneel in their underwear, clear skin and perfect muscles from unending training gleaming like armor in the sunlight.

"As the anger grows in your heart, no matter how much you try to deny it . . ." begins The King's greatest aide. "Hunger makes his people go on. Our place is to grow what shall feed them."

Still smiling, the Minister beckons the new recruits to their feet, and like stone automatons they rise without noise. He raises a spindly hand in The King's salute : index finger touching his palm, thumb resting against his knuckle and his other three fingers stretched towards the sky. With slow, deliberate arms, they return the movement.

"As the Gods all watch as we craw . . ." The Minister calls, smiling fading and his comical face belying every atom of his seriousness.

"No matter what, we will stand by Our Master," the new generation of King's Harvest echoes with soldierly unison. "Our cradles and our graves under stones."

"Dug up by fathers resting beneath us."

And out he comes, in every modicum of glory he embodies. The King's crown is polished into a brassy, blinding tower upon his head, as do his beard and moustache. His dreadlocks hang from his scalp loosely, lively, as if electrified by the pure power The King wields. With collected surety he strides to his throne. When he sits upon it, the entire Palace rumbles and fixtures along the walls sparkle anew as the dust upon them is shaken off.

With ever increasing rarity, The King speaks.

"My field," he says, sweeping his twelve new protectors with a strong-knuckled hand. "My seeds."

Even the voice of The King cannot rouse the souls of his dark guardians from their slumber, and their faces stay stoic and marble. All the same, they reply with unyielding intent.

"I AM THE HARVEST."


	3. The King Wants You!

TERROR! BLOOD AND RUBBLE! AVATAR COUNTRY'S ENEMIES ARE AT THE GATES!

The King strides across the battlements like a lion, braving the fiery winter air. The opening of the battle had already destroyed swaths of the country, and before his glacial eyes, another burning hulk of energy arcs over his , followed by a great flash and the oily odor of burning buildings. The snow does nothing to mitigate the fires. If anything they only worsen under the ice and wind. But The King always has a plan. He surely does, as sure as his wrath was furious and his love unequaled and his beard golden.

A crash of artillery near our position takes my eyes off of the tiny dot on the wall that was The King. The letter before me lies blank, just a rectangle of crinkly parchment that dips in and out of focus as the lamp in the dirt ceiling above me swings. Boom! Another shell shakes the dug-out dirt room. The Enemy is unrelenting. And they must be getting closer. I would die for The King, just as every single one of the boys and girls in the slippery, bloody trench outside would, without hesitation and with his mighty name on my dying lips. I am the wind upon which all his words ride out. That did not mean I wanted to. I was no King's Harvest, after all. The Harvest could kill better than anyone. I am just a boy, scared and tired and ready to wash the snow and blood out of my dry red hair.

I hear shouting, buzzing and desperate, coming through the doorless opening of the room, and gunfire cracks the air. The wind howls more savagely, and it carries the stink of obliterated flesh and smoke into my face. Death comes. I think of my mother, scared and alone, standing in a crowd of a million other Citizens of Avatar Country, watching The King's Elite Orchestra issue the call to war. She'll need closure, when she reads that I've died.

I pick up a writing utensil, and then-

 _Spent my whole life not growing, now the whole world is coming. I don't know why we're fighting. I just know that I'm going. Chip on my shoulder, everyone's getting older . . . Heroes die young. That's fine. I'm still a child inside._

 _Dead today, it's all the same as long as someone knows my name_.

More guns, heavier calibers, explode outside; something automatic, spewing death in tiny silver pellets hotter than the sun. Someone thuds down right in the entryway. Blood cakes in what remains of her black-haired scalp, and the lion crest of Avatar Country on the breast of her shirt is decorating in liquid scarlet. I almost lift my gun from the dryer soil next to me, but then a rumble of treads and heavy machinery shakes the ground. I plod outside, crying out at the spike of frozen wind that throws dirt and human rubble into my eyes. My feet almost sink into the ground. But, I scale the side of the trench just in time to see it. Someone points, shouting "Look to The King!"

Another shout: "All eyes on The King!"

And from atop the massive, grinding combat tank thundering from Avatar Country's gates, bristling with machine guns and a bull skull turret, The King's own Propaganda Minister shouts : "ALL HAIL THE KING!"

And there he was, astride the great engine of death that rode towards us. His crown, blessed by Osbourne, God of Darkness, gleamed even in the dark winter and his eyes were lined in war kohl. They blazed with anger and his dreadlocks framed his bearded face like a lion's mane. His axe, The King's Flower, shot death every which way at the enemy, embroidered in red and gold.

I and the rest of his children with me rise from the trench, charging.


	4. King After King

THERE IS NO WORSHIP IN AVATAR COUNTRY TONIGHT.

The snow blows against the walls colder and more howling than it had the night before, or before that, or ever had or would. The sky is so dark, partially due to Avatar Country's intemperate weather and partially due to the lack of lit torches in the land. There are no lights, no more worship. No more King.

And it makes them angry!

But anger is futile. The snow hushes all of it out as the populace marches out of the gates, heading for the mountain that was so large even Avatar Country itself was completely dwarfed by it. Some among the procession have made this journey before. These were the men and women with hammers in their hands, those who had helped The King himself build the walls around his domain, the bulwarks that had guarded the world's outcasts against all care.

Who else would he have enlisted to build his tomb, should the unthinkable happen?

The Propaganda Minister heads the pack, the rest of the Elite Orchestra at his shoulders. They had no strength in their souls left for a song; tears for Their King had drained all of it from them. But still, they try. The tune the Orchestra plays is nothing like those of old. It bears none of the fury or elation or power of the songs played while The King breathed. The Minister sees only a reflection of Avatar Country's lesser state in the song.

Behind him, their sleek combat harnesses pounded by freezing and barbed air, come the King's Harvest. Tears lit upon their cheeks, and even the most merciless warriors of Avatar Country are proven to have hearts. They mourn with the Citizens, one long train of sorrow stretching all the way back to their beloved, heart-broken land.

Upon the shoulders of His Harvest-

There is borne The King, within a tomb of glass and amber wood, draped in the fiery colors of his Kingdom. Even in death, his moustache and beard were clipped and perfumed to perfection. His eyes are closed, and the powdery black kohl around them is meticuously done and redone. His mane of hair is wavy, bold tongues of golden brown emanating from his scalp. His velvet robes and cape were so finely washed that they shone, even in the wintery dark of a world that mourned the loss of its finest son. His crown, blessed by Osbourne, the God of darkness, had been polished until it sparkled like a star, its jewels, enough for all of history's monarchs, slicing through the screaming winds and the black sky as they glowed.

But the Citizens know. The King's Harvest and his Elite Orchestra do, too. They all know that no amount of finery will do him justice. Avatar Country's lion will never roar again.

They keep marching, the whole of the Citizenry trudging up icy cliffs and through mud so cold it frostbites their feet. They care not. The temperature and the land are kindenesses compared to the knives that fester in their hearts. They keep walking. Up the mountain they curl, a serpent of pariah-flesh and grief spurred on by the melancholy tribute that the Orchestra play.

Though it seems as though it was an eternity, the summit is finally reached. The tear-streaked parade is so high up, it feels at though they could reach up and pluck the blackened clouds from the air. There is a kind of plateau, snowy and barren, near the top of the mountain, and it is in this that the Citizens spread out, making way for the Harvest and the corpse of their messiah. A circular column of stone blocks stands near the far end of the clearing, almost parallel to the peak of the mountain itself. Next to it is a scattered pile of similar rubble; the blocks are nearly all the same size. Upon its four-foot-height, The King's coffin is placed. The Harvest surround it, weapons at the ready. They had failed to protect their master, the Minister thought; they must be determined to make sure Avatar Country's enemies did not desecrate his body.

The Minister stands in front of the crowd, hands behind his back. His shoulders sag in fatigue; after all, it had been he left to manage the Kingdom in the wake of The King's demise. All of the tears and agony and vicious rage had been placed on his shoulders. But the greatest weight upon him had been The King's absence. The Minister had no greater friend in all the world, no one he admired more than the lord of Avatar Country. It was their nation, that the two friends had built together.

And now one of them had to be laid to rest.

He turns to the crowd. His face, covered in black and red birthmarks, must have looked so sallow and sagging, not to mention blue in the lips from the cold. It was so unlike the cold that The King had conjured, the winter that he cast over Avatar Country with his slightest dreams. It was unknowable, indifferent; nothing at all like The King.

The Minister swallows a stabbing breath, and begins.

"The heart of A King can be measured in dreams . . ." he breathes.

"Reaching the sleep of his people."

The Citizens knew this chant. Now they mix their voices with his.

"A whisper of ghosts saying we'll be redeemed . . ." the united crowd buzzes.

"From our sins he will build us a castle."

They plod across mud and snowy slush to the piles of blocks. They move slowly, grief numbing their minds and hearts to all other stimuli. Like zombies they mill around the piles, each of them picking up a block or two of stone. All are part of this. Men and women both lift stacks of rock in their arms; mothers help their little children heave them in pairs, and old men spurred by their grown sons do what they can.

"One day we'll be stronger . . ." Orchestra and Harvest and Citizen sing.

They carry their blocks in a wind-blasted, teeth-chattering journey to the body of The King. Around his raised coffin, a second, cylindrical layer of black stone is built, larger than the first so that the entirety of the casket will be contained within. Block after block after block later, reality is frozen into the hearts of all of Avatar Country. The King is dead. He is buried; he must be dead.

"We will ride right beside you . . ."

Night rolls on.

"Until we are stronger . . ."

It is endless and cold. The King is dead.

"We put stone upon stone.

Await your return."

But even in the darkest of nights, those loyal to The King are loyal to the death. Someone far back in the crowd, a woman's voice, it seems, screams raggedly "GLORY TO THE KING!"

Another pierces the night, a man this time. "All hail The King!"

More heart-throbbing cries wrent the air, a cacaphony of reverence, and the moment is just right.

"ALL EYES ON THE KING!" The Propaganda Minister roars, and the rest of the Elite Orchestra begin chasing the darkness away with a wall of drums and strums.

"From this tomb we shall build you a throne, in your name we shall sing!" The Worship goes, bursting like a star. Per his command, the Minister watches the eyes of all, every Citizen from the Kingdom, land on the still body of their ruler.

"Light your torch!" the Minister prays, as though he pleads with the flighty spirit of the King to return to his people, the very same people who shout that plea to the black heavens. "Let the flames bring you home! Long live The King!"

.

.

.

The sky cracks open, and the dark, hateful clouds dissipate immediately. All of the lightning and furious hurricane winds are chased away. The bricks, those in the hands of Citizens still piling them atop The King, fall to the ground as their carriers lose all sense of reality for pure shock. Fire fills the air. Tongues of flame, gold and red and black, roar through the air as the layer of darkness is ripped from the heavens. The Citizens have seen this before. Calloused scabs of memory are torn away along with the midnight, and they remember the land before The King, digging through lifeless silt looking for food, and some measure of self and warmth. It had been ragged existence then, eeking out sufferage on the edge of the universe. But then he had come, upon his steed, taking this land as his own and these people as his charges. The King had unleashed his fury, shattered the sky and bent the tidal waves themselves to his will. They had been frightened then, they remembered; but they had known it was their rebirth, into the fiery hands of The King, hands that girdled the world in reins of steel-

Hands that strum his Flower, as he smashes his way through stone and wood, his mane of treasury hair flowing from his crown like brassy ropes of divinity in the thunder and sunlight.

The notes The King plays both overshadow and compliment those of the Elite Orchestra, testament to his fluid power. The crowd does not cheer. Dawn rises over the mountain, and the Citizens of Avatar Country lower, to their knees, in hoarfrost and mud that feels like summer grass.

At the King's boots, looking straight into his ruler's glacier-blue eyes, the Minister kneels. He raises his cane. Love and loyalty burst into being in his heart. He is deadly serious but overflowing with joy. All things are for The King.

"The longing for sun, and the heartbreak undone," he growls. "Breaking the back of false idols!"

He gestures to the valley below the great peak. Avatar Country lies still and silent and illuminated in the new morning. In snowdrifts that gleam like armor, dots can be seen, spreading over the wastes in perfect, lifeless symmetry. They are the featureless tents of The Enemy, the very same whose dark marines had slain The King not long ago.

"Bring Our King home," The Minister says, the Citizens surrounding him. Looks of bliss and relief plaster upon a thousand thousand faces. "For among us are none who are worthy to be his disciples!"

In a tide of triumph unlike the flood of men and women that had come up the mountain, Citizens, Harvest, and Orchestra roll down the cliffs like an avalanche. The King follows, smiling.

"He was buried at dusk! At dawn he returns!"

The Enemy brushes a few flecks of snow from his armored shoulder, rolling his silver eyes in annoyance. He had already recieved word from his assassins hours ago that The King had been slain. He and his men had seen the citizens of his psychopathic Kingdom trail up to his tomb. The Kingdom was empty. Where were they?

The unremarkable black tent flutters in the dark wind, and The Enemy almost thinks his scout has returned. The lack of the man's face appearing through the hole in the cloth just makes him snarl in disgust, and pour over battle plans long ago seen through just for something to do. He runs his tongue over a cracked lip, and winces as it begins to bleed. The winters here were horrific, and dried out nose and mouth of he and his men alike. It was just too cold. The light in the tent is just sufficient enough for The Enemy to make out the rough contours of the wall when he turns around, indignant.

Well, nothing left to do but wait-

Something slams against the table where his battle plans lay, knocking them over and almost tossing the table itself over onto its side. He whirls around, weapon raised and pointed at the mysterious intruder. He drops it the moment he recognizes the face.

The scout heaves in great sloths of breath, blue in the lips and red with exertion and frostbite. He leans ove the table with his stomach, sucking in oxygen like someone stabbed through the throat. The Enemy rushes over to him, helps him up and tries to ask him what he saw. What were the people of the Kingdom doing?

But the look in the man's dark eyes silences The Enemy instantly.

"Out there . . . in the wasteland . . ." he gasps. There's . . . something coming for us!"

Another man, clad in heavy, plated navy armor barges in, his shield and weapons gripped tight in his gauntleted hand.

"A call, from the wasteland!" He exclaims.

The table shakes, as if from the footfalls of some massive animal far in the distance. It sounds as if the greatest storm the world had ever seen had come to kill the sunlight-

Sunlight?!

Sure enough, with one poke of his combed head out of the tent, warm rays of shining gold met his face. And the rumbling of thousands of feet became louder. More frequent. Closer. Soon the smell of flames rolled in, and the shout of weapons clanging against one another. And wild screams.

"HE WAS BURIED AT DUSK, AT DAWN HE RETURNS!"


	5. Winter Comes When The King Dreams Of Sno

WINTER COMES WHEN THE KING DREAMS OF SNOW.

The citizens of Avatar Country are well-accustomed to such enviromental side effects of their ruler's slumbering wonderings. The King's heart had decided Avatar Country's fate since the dawn of time. And he is always fair, and loving, and unassailable. The King is the perfect ruler. That is why they love him. That he brings warm, bountiful summers and the most refreshing winters anywhere in the land with merely his unconscious whims doesn't hurt at all.

It is, however, rare for The King to be afraid.

In his sleeping mind he walks among a garden of statues, erupting out of the ground like rough-hewn, solid plants. His crown is gone, and he is stripped down to only his barest coverings. Wind howls through the garden, bringing snow and ice among the toes of the statues, and The King feels very cold, very alone. He hears something call to him from the armies of stone men and women. Its voice is the roar of the air and the faraway crash of fallen glaciers. He is in Avatar Country, but a dystopian taste of it, where there is no sound, no light, no Citizenry. As he walks through the desolate wasteland of his Kingdom, The King finds nothing but buildings hushed into blackness and cautious silence and permafrost-webbed soil split by forests of people frozen in granite.

Whenever he has this dream, The King always comes to outside the gates, and must trek the wintery graveyard of Avatar Country's entire length. Always he hears the voice, beckoning him to his Palace. The doors are closed with bars of pure metal, and inside is nothing but stillness, painted dark, navy blue by the cold. With desperate clawing that is most unlike him in the daylight, he manages to rip off a few beams from the door's surface, and climb inside. Feet turned black and blue and red with frostbite, he stands in the deserted and dusty interior of a Palace he knew like the contours of his crown.

Something had happened here, something subtle and malicious. Soft moonlight turns the fearsome colors of his Kingdom's flag into subdued hues of blue and grey. His throne is empty, and the great window behind it, from which the sun had bathed him in light as bright as any divine savior deserved, is dark. Their arms gathering dust, both of the massive automatons on either side of his throne are as still as ever, but they glow with power and exuberance no longer.

The King is a man of superstition, and so his mind is made up. Something esoteric and malevolent beyond the minds of men had fallen upon his Kingdom and wrenched the elements from his control. It had banished his people from the world and snuffed out the light of goodness that was Avatar Country. Though in his dream he is weak, without crown or flower, The King is still to be feared. Ice burrows through his dreadlocks and he grits his teeth in determination : he will find whoever or whatever has done this to his Kingdom and he will vanquish them back into the cosmos where they belong.

He sees more statues growing from the ground. In some places they were so perseverant that they split apart the tile-mosaic floor of the Palace entirely; pieces of art, priceless in beauty, shattered forevermore. Once or twice, The King tries to speak. When he does, it's an ugly rasp. Frustration pierces his temple when he cannot regain control of it. It's as if he hasn't used it for a thousand years. He shouts hoarsely for The Harvest, for the Propaganda Minister, The Saviors, even for the Messiah, the most rogueish member of his Elite Orchestra.

The contents of the Palace are silent, but someone does answer. It's the same voice that has tempted The King for as long as he's walked through the dream, the one that's beckoned him towards it. Now that he's out of the harsh elements outside, it doesn't sound like a lord of the winter; he hears a woman's voice, deep and ragged, but also the cawing of a great predatory bird. The halls are twisted, dark stone, not at all like the real world. Twisted vines and briars join the ice creeping along the walls, and more stone people jutting from beneath the ground. Calls of animals ring through the hangman's quiet; wolves howl, eagles cry, grasshoppers play their songs. Bees ripple by the millions in the air, ravens rasp, and The King presses his hands to his ears in pain as the rolling thunder of bellowing bears assaults him. It feels as though he's been walking amongst the carved effigies of the dead and these apocalypse halls forever. Wait! He takes another step and feels the temperature drop by a few degrees. Whistling wind brushes his face and his bare chest, and shadows of moonlight drip from around the corner in front of him. The end is near! The King steels himself, eyes more blue than the winter outside and all the winters to ever come, and runs to the end of the hall.

He turns the corner and finds the back of the Palace blown away. Sections of it hang out over a gargantuan cliff face that does not exist in his waking hours. Where extensions of corridors or rooms and storage closets had been, now there is only destruction and open air, extending down the sloping hole for miles, and miles.

A dais of natural stone, hewn haphazardly, also juts out into the open, cold air. More snow and thorny, dry plants tunnel around and through the rock, anchoring it to the ground. It seems to The King like a tumor, a foreign growth in Avatar Country from a wild, savage world that no longer was. He almost can't see what lies on the highest level of the dais through the thickets of statues.

He doesn't need to. The piercing shriek of birds spears his ears and he cries out, looking through tears. Casting a terrible, winged shadow against the moon is a great Owl, as wide as The King is tall. Her eyes regarded him with yellow disdain, and she calls again :

"It's my time. My darkness, my might, divine. It has been foretold ; this land will live and die by my hand. Child to the moon, and the storm, silent shadow growing . . . I'm reborn." From the great chasm behind her, creatures rise. A tide of fur and tooth and beak and claw and feather and flesh floods upward to meet The Owl, armies uncountable in number.

"Everything is going to be okay," she hisses. Then she lunges at The King, her beak a gleaming midnight sword coming for him. Just as she strikes, he's pulled backwards, summoned up into the sky by great hands of white light, surging through the watery slog of unconsciousness.

The King blinks. Daylight caresses his eyes.

His crown lies on his nightstand next to him. The King's Flower hangs in its case above his head, and frosty morning air fumigates the often overly warm room.

A tearing screech and beating wings stab along the air over Avatar Country.

"Don't care if you're ready! I'll take what's mine!"


End file.
